Loose steer won't be fenced in

Frank Juliano, Staff Writer

Updated 10:12 am, Tuesday, October 11, 2011

MILFORD -- If the 700-pound steer on the loose here since July had a theme song, it would be "Don't Fence Me In."

Animal control officials said Monday the animal, which escaped from a farm on the West Haven-Orange line and is now hunkered down in a clearing off Milford Point Road, has bashed through the steel fencing meant to contain it.

"It's a very powerful young animal, and it's been banging its way out," said Rick George, the city's animal control director. "So far the fencing has not been successful and next week we may have to go to Plan B: sedation."

Kathleen Schurman, owner of the Locket's Meadow animal sanctuary in Bethany, said the steer isn't busting through the fence as much as knocking through it. "It's steel, nothing is going through. But there are metal rods and pins connecting the sections and by repeatedly ramming it, he has popped them.''

The need to corral the errant steer grows as the nights get colder, George and Schurman said. The animal has been grazing on the lush foliage and was even seen sharing a stand of greens with a deer, but that vegetation is beginning to die off.

"He could starve if we don't get him out of there,'' Schurman said. "And when he gets hungry, he'll get cranky. Cows are very aggressive feeders and it'll take food wherever it can find it."

Large-animal veterinarians said that steers can be temperamental and can grow quickly in size. Right now, the animal that George has nicknamed "Waldo'' and others here are calling "Ferdinand'' after the gentle bull in a children's book, seems gentle enough.

The male calf had earlier been described as a bull, but George and Schurman said that the animal had been castrated. "It was being raised for food,'' Schurman said. "They were going to kill it and eat it. Animals seem to sense when they are in that kind of trouble, and it has worked very hard to be OK. So whatever happens, it won't be slaughtered. It deserves better than that.''

The farm that it escaped from does not want the steer back, George said. It is possible that once the animal is captured, the city could seek to collect its costs from the owner, he said.

George said if the steer has to be sedated, it is likely that several men will have to carry it from the clearing where it spent much of the summer. "We may be able to back up a tow truck and pull it out, too; we won't know until we get in there," he said.

Schurman said an electric fence would contain the steer, but one isn't available at the moment. Waldo, or Ferdinand, or whatever its name is, won't be joining the menagerie at Locket's Meadow, she said. Her Bethany farm is already home to horses, pigs and cows marked for slaughter.

"I am going to call some other sanctuaries I know of; hopefully, one of them will have an opening," Schurman said.

George agreed that the rescued steer will need a lot of land to roam. "It's very exuberant, and an escape artist besides,'' he said.